A COP IN TROUBLE

She remembers being raped on the hood of a police car along a dark, dead-end Jacksonville street.

Begging the cop to stop didn't work, she told investigators. Neither did showing him she was menstruating.

A street informant on probation, she feared being jailed and losing her kids if she didn't obey. That's what the cop threatened, she said.

After reliving those moments with detectives, there came a warning.

"You'll find others," she said.

Police and prosecutors say she was right.

Shawn Mario Pringle, 35, is charged with sexual battery on two women, attempting to attack another and is accused of forcing himself upon four others since 2000, sometimes while wearing his Jacksonville Sheriff's Office uniform.

He resigned in May and was arrested in June after the informant came forward. Charges in two other cases were filed later in the summer. He has pleaded not guilty and is free on $500,000 bond while awaiting trial.

Pringle told investigators the only sex he had was consensual. Police did not know at the time about the other accusations, and Pringle told a detective there were no other incidents.

Pringle declined an interview with The Times-Union, but when asked how he was feeling before one court hearing, the 15-year police veteran smiled and said, "Fantastic." He remains popular with some officers, who've given him comforting pats and hugs in the courthouse.

Former Jacksonville Police Officer Shawn Pringle during an interview concerning an allegation of rape. At right, Pringle attends a pre-trial hearing in February.

Two of the women were confidential informants. Pringle taught a third one at the police academy. Another said he stopped her for speeding and returned to her life two years later.

Pringle spent nearly two hours telling detectives he had nothing to do with attacking the woman on the dead-end street. He initially denied picking her up and taking her to eat. After eventually admitting he'd done both, he insisted he took her straight home.

"Did you drive down there with her that night?" detective Rusty Rogers asked.

"No, I did not," Pringle said.

"Did you ever engage in sex with her?" Rogers asked.

"Never, not one time," Pringle said.

Pringle changed his story after being told police found a bloodied hand towel at the scene. He'd also learned the woman set him up in a secret tape recording after she went to police. Pringle then told Rogers the sex was consensual, not forced.

"I didn't do anything criminally wrong," he said, over and over again.

The allegations make no sense to friends and family, who said Pringle cared deeply about crime victims.

"I don't believe that he's capable of just outright hurting somebody," said Roger Harvey, a Clay County Sheriff's Office sergeant and long-time friend of Pringle's. "The Shawn Pringle I know is a stand-up guy and a good police officer. I was flabbergasted."

But others, like the woman who alleges the dead-end rape, have nothing kind to say.

"He's an arrogant bastard," she said.

Friends, family shocked

Visiting Pringle in jail devastated his father.

"I could not believe that that was my son on the inside looking out," said Willard Pringle. "I never thought that for any apparent reason I would have to ... go visit my son in jail."

Pringle grew up in Putnam County and attended Interlachen High School, where he played football, basketball and was in the band. Interlachen athletic director Doug Feltner remembers Pringle as a well-behaved, above-average student.

"I don't remember Shawn ever being in trouble in school, so I was very surprised and saddened at what I read," Feltner said of the charges. "He was conscientious."

Pringle joined the Putnam County Sheriff's Office in 1989, after graduation. The rookie caught a burglar after a 150-yard chase in his first week on duty.

"He proved to me and anybody else that he could handle the job," Harvey said. "He was like a kid with a Christmas toy."

Pringle became a Clay County deputy in 1991 and a Jacksonville cop the next year. He passed his pre-employment screening in Jacksonville with ease, though a background check found a woman angry that he'd gotten her daughter pregnant. An acquaintance also complained he fathered another child out of wedlock.

Pringle worked a beat, served on a team that targeted neighborhood problems and spent two stints as a narcotics detective. He also taught defensive tactics at the police academy.

Supervisors praised his aggressiveness, fitness, leadership and public courtesy, though he was once counseled about being too firm, evaluations show. He also received 16 commendations, including one for preventing a woman from jumping off the Buckman Bridge.

"His upbeat demeanor fosters a spirit of high morale," one supervisor wrote. "Officer Pringle ... makes people feel that their problems are important," wrote another.

But Pringle also got into plenty of trouble. Police files show that 10 of 13 internal complaints filed against him were sustained, including three for incompetency and two for unbecoming conduct. He received either counseling or written reprimands each time.

In a 1993 case, Pringle was reprimanded for belittling two Clay County reserve deputies who stopped him during a burglary stakeout at a closed car lot. He'd also been reprimanded for not immediately reporting to an assignment at a high school, where a fight erupted in his absence.

Pringle's problems with women surfaced in 1999, when he was arrested on a domestic violence charge. Records show that Pringle and his girlfriend argued over a woman he'd met. He straddled his girlfriend on the floor as he tried to talk to her, but she pushed him away. He grabbed her by the arm and pushed back. She bit the inside of her mouth and started to run. Pringle grabbed her, scraping her wrist.

The girlfriend later refused to cooperate and the case was dropped.

Pringle also developed a reputation among some of his colleagues as a flirt. Harvey said Pringle was a "ladies man."

"Just seemed like every time I saw him he had a new girlfriend or a new date," Harvey said. "He treated women always with respect."

More than a handful would disagree.

Other women come forward

s a teen, Shawn Pringle (right) played football for Interlachen High School. The school's athletic director Doug Feltner, who remembers Pringle as a "conscientious" student, said he was "surprised and saddened" after learning of the charges. Special to the Times-Union

The cases against Pringle piled up as word of his arrest in the informant's rape led police to other women. Some called in the information. Investigators found others through numbers in Pringle's cell phone. One name came from an identification card in Pringle's desk.

Police say the first attack occurred in 2000 after a woman said Pringle stopped her in his police car.

The woman told police she had known Pringle for about a year and had rebuffed his previous advances and a marriage proposal. She recalled he once fondled himself on her couch in uniform. On another occasion, she told police he exposed himself while in uniform in his police car.

The woman said she was assaulted in a parking lot off Blanding Boulevard after leaving work at a nearby strip club. She said Pringle pinned her against her car, took off her pants and underwear and began licking her. She said she escaped after kneeing him in the face.

"When he was messing with the button on my pants, I told him to stop," the woman told police. "And he just didn't listen. He just kept right on going."

Other women described to police aggressive behavior in encounters they had with Pringle, including:

A woman who knew Pringle was a cop in 2002 said she was driving home when he stopped her by flashing the lights of his private car. She said he pinned her against the car, fondled her and tried to undress her before she got away. Pringle later told his girlfriend the woman initiated the encounter. He was charged with attempted sexual battery.

Former Jacksonville Sheriff's Office detective Shawn Pringle, pictured while still a member of the Clay County Sheriff's Office, has been charged with sexual battery on two women. Special to the Times-Union

A woman whom Pringle befriended while she was a cadet at the police academy said he took her to a parking lot in his undercover car under the guise of wanting to talk and had unwanted sex with her. No charges have been filed in the 2003 incident.

A woman introduced to Pringle by the cadet told police that after a nightclub outing in 2003, he exposed himself and attempted to force her to fondle him. She refused and he took her home. No charges have been filed.

Another informant told police she agreed to have sex with Pringle in a motel, where he had driven his unmarked police car last year. The woman said she told Pringle at one point he was hurting her and asked him to stop, but he didn't and she later bled. No charges were filed.

A woman said she was once stopped for speeding by Pringle about four years ago and began having consensual sex with him, once on the hood of his police car. When she tried to end the relationship, she said he continued being aggressive and once tried to strip her.

She also recalled a time when she resisted his advances in his truck after he'd followed her home. She said he wanted to go inside, but she repeatedly told him no. His bizarre response left her stunned.

"He wanted to have sex and he kept pulling at my clothes and out loud [he] said, 'No means no.' He scared me," the woman told investigators. "He just kind of ... stared out the front window like he was the only person there."

As for the dead-end road incident, Pringle admitted to detectives that he embarrassed himself and the Sheriff's Office by having sex with the informant in January. But even when told the woman passed a polygraph, Pringle continued to deny raping her.

"It just should never have happened," Pringle said.

He mentioned resigning but also suggested that his superiors give him a second chance.

"[I'm] hoping they will have enough trust and faith in me not to move me out of narcotics," Pringle said.

Willard Pringle said his son told him in jail that he'd done nothing wrong.

"He came out with tears in his eyes, shaking his head," Pringle said. "And he said, 'Dad, it just didn't happen.' I said, 'OK, you don't have to explain it to me. I believe you.' At this particular point in time there is no way anyone's going to convince me my son is a rapist."

Police said none of the women came forward before the informant alleging the dead-end road rape. She first made the allegation four months later, telling another detective Pringle was a "dirty cop." That detective reported the allegation to the Sheriff's Office integrity unit.

Before his arrest in June, Pringle promised detective Rogers the accusations against him would be limited to the two informants.